Gilbert Timothy White – 50th Reunion Essay

Gilbert Timothy White

881 County Road 14

Grand Marais, Minnesota 55604

twhiteqcrs@gmail.com

218-377-2712

Career: Sled dog racing (mushing) and equipment

Avocations: Herbal medicine and growing medicinal plants

College: Timothy Dwight

Diversity and adversity are the mothers of invention. The subjects and fields of study that seemed interesting in school did not lead directly to enjoyable and fulfilling jobs. As a physics major with a broad range of interests in other subjects, I was lucky to be able to take many diverse courses at Yale. I remember my faculty advisor trying to discourage me from a course in the engineering field. He compared it to cement mixing and told me I could learn that on my own time. Fortunately I failed one of the core physics courses junior year, partly because of long weekends skiing in Vermont, and was free of the repressive physics department.

I started work after graduation as a stress analysis engineer with Boeing, the 747C project. After a few months I quit to take a job at The Putney School in Vermont, where I had gone for cross-country skiing races the previous years while at Yale. The following winter I took students from the school to watch a sled dog race in New Hampshire, and that lead me to a 40-year career as a sled dog racer and designer-builder of equipment for mushing. Boeing and The Putney School kept me out of Vietnam while channeling me into an occupation that combined elements of all my background, studies, and interests.

From 1988 until 2008 I participated in many races or other mushing-related events in the Alps, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, the Andes, Japan, Kamchatka, and Korea.

I gradually retired from racing, reduced my workload in the equipment end of things, and now follow the lead of my namesake, the 18th-century naturalist, Gilbert White of Selborne.